


Legato

by minnabird



Category: Seraphina - Rachel Hartman
Genre: Clothed Sex, F/F, First Time, Music, Polyamory, background Seraphina/Kiggs, post-Shadow Scale pre-Tess of the Road
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-19 19:26:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minnabird/pseuds/minnabird
Summary: While working on a new composition, Seraphina discovers that she can love both Kiggs and Glisselda.





	Legato

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kkslover9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kkslover9/gifts).



> Thanks to keita52 for betaing!

Seraphina’s first inkling of a new truth about herself – Saints’ dogs, when would she finally stop finding unsuspected depths in her own mind? – came when Viridius hired a new assistant.

Seraphina had been curious about him from the first. Lars had left Goredd months ago to visit Blanche; last she had heard, he was cooking up a new instrument to strain all of their ears. Viridius had only now found a replacement, and he had been practically whistling since the audition. So, the third or fourth time she ended up alone with the new assistant, she asked, “Are you and Viridius…?”

The assistant, Rafe, was a pretty young man: though gawky compared to Lars, he had tawny hair that curled attractively into his green eyes and a spray of freckles like stars. And, disconcertingly, he _laughed_ at Seraphina’s question. “No, we’re not.”

Seraphina flushed and, in momentary panic, said the first thing that popped to her mind. “So you’re not a Daanite, then?” She tried to cover this overstep by adding, “I mean to say, his…he took so long to hire a new assistant, and he seems so pleased with you…”

Rafe, still laughing, put down the sheet music he’d been rifling through and reached across the shared worktable to cover one of her hands with his. “Maid Dombegh, I think we would both be happier if I stopped this monologue now,” he said. “I’m not with Viridius, whatever happened with St. Lars. I’m not exactly _not_ a Daanite, either – although I’d say I’m more like St. Masha. Fond of both.”

“Fond of both?” Seraphina echoed, confused.

“Men and women,” he said. At her deepening frown, he said, “For a saint, you’re not well-versed in scripture, are you?”

“So I’ve been told,” Seraphina said tartly.

Ignoring her bite, Rafe went on. “St. Masha was in love with a woman before St. Daan. She was killed by a dragon, poor thing, and he mourned her terribly for many years. Loving St. Daan healed him at last, but it never erased what had gone before.” He smiled softly. “I always liked St. Masha. He holds tragedy and happiness in one heart, and never lets the one undo the other.”

“That’s a lovely story,” Seraphina said, tracing the grain of the table’s wood with one finger. “I’d never heard it.” But she wasn’t thinking about how none of the nicest saints’ words had been taught to her. She was thinking about St. Masha, and the idea of being fond of both.

It hadn’t occurred to her until now, not really, that such a thing was possible. There wasn’t a word for it in Goreddi, and she’d never learned enough Porphyrian to know if they had one. Was that all that had stopped her thinking about it? Not having the language? She thought about how she’d struggled with Porphyrian genders at first.

Some little ache told her it wasn’t just that. Suddenly, an old admission of Camba’s sprang, unbidden, to mind: _I was already ityasaari; it embarrassed me to be even more complicated than that._

“Mm?” she said, realizing Rafe had spoken.

“I said, I’ll tell you more about St. Masha sometime, if you like,” he said.

“I’d like that,” Seraphina said, her mind still far away.

*

Seraphina had been struggling, the day she spoke to Rafe, with a new piece for the anniversary of the Queen’s coronation. Glisselda’s advisors had talked her into hosting feasts and entertainments for the event; it was part of what Kiggs sometimes called the campaign of peace.

As exhausting as the continued efforts to reforge Goredd’s relationships were, Seraphina’s only official duty was to write this new song, to premiere during the celebrations. It ought to have been a dream of a task. But the more she wrote, the more the music twisted and tangled, refusing to take a proper shape. How to write a fitting tribute to a woman who was so many things to her?

That day, as she bent to her composition again, the music began to flow from her pen like a river burst from its dam.

*

An extravagance of candles glittered in the ballroom, and Seraphina and Kiggs were stealing a dance before they had to part ways for the evening.

“Are you ready?” Kiggs said into her ear, and Seraphina made a soft noise in her throat. He could have meant for the performance: Seraphina would be playing her flute, with the rest of the musicians behind her. They both knew what he really meant, though.

“Are you? You’re sure?” she asked. The dance pulled her away for a moment, and she searched his eyes when their hands clasped again. He smiled, soft and warm and open, and Seraphina relaxed. “I know. We’ve talked and talked, and I ought to be sick of asking that question by now.”

Kiggs’ thumb brushed against the small of her back, describing a small, soothing circle. “Some changes are good,” he said. “I think this one could be very good.”

Seraphina carried those words with her as she went to meet with Rafe and the court musicians, and she lost herself in the familiar clamor of setting up for a performance. As the audience began to filter in, Seraphina excused herself to take a peek at them.

There Glisselda sat, resplendent in cerulean blue and gold, a single curl tumbling artfully from its pins to brush against her neck. For a moment, she looked like something halfway between woman and goddess, a painted icon of a queen. The illusion broke when she turned to Kiggs and whispered something, the little smile and the gleam in her eyes all Glisselda. Seraphina’s heart squeezed.

She took her position without speaking to the others, and let the drone of the instruments tuning up together steady her. Hers was the first part: her flute twirling through the initial theme alone, the others joining. It was a warm, bouncing tune, sunlight on waters. The woodwinds kept hold of the theme, while something firmer and stronger marched beneath.

And then Seraphina came in again, her flute weaving in between the two tunes, soft but insistent. She let everything she’d been feeling the past months pour into it as the other instruments seemed to listen, slowly shifting until they played under the new theme. It was warm, too, but there was a sadness in it, a longing. It twisted and twirled, until once more that first theme came in again, at first softly from the viols, then the sackbuts joined in, until the two tunes twined together. Sorrow and joy, maturity and innocence, love and loss: contradictions every bit as lovely as Glisselda’s.

The last note, too, was Seraphina’s, and as it hung shivering in the air, she looked to Glisselda. Her eyes glittered in the candlelight, but she was smiling. Their eyes caught, and Seraphina nearly put her flute down and went straight to her. Only the beginning of the applause stopped her, and she bowed and stood awkwardly through their appreciation, feeling raw and exposed every second of it. She endured the other musicians’ congratulations and escaped as soon as she could.

There was nothing she could do now but wait. Glisselda’s night was far from over, but Seraphina had no nerve to join that noisy world again. In the end, she fell asleep in her study, her head resting on her folded arms.

A soft knock woke her, and she blinked at the dark window. “Yes?” she asked.

The door opened, and Glisselda slipped inside. “Lucian said you might want to see me,” she said. She was out of the splendid clothes from before, wrapped in a dressing gown instead, her hair loose around her shoulders. Instantly, Seraphina felt vulnerable again, but Glisselda just laughed and added, “Though why it couldn’t wait till morning, he wouldn’t say. He had his inscrutable face on, you know the one.”

Sleepy, stupid, and more than a little terrified, all Seraphina could manage was, “Did you like your song?”

Glisselda pressed a hand over her heart, and Seraphina knew she didn’t care enough about the answer to listen. “No, wait, come here,” she said. She caught Glisselda’s hand when she was close enough, and held onto it like a lifeline.

“Phina?” Glisselda asked, confused.

“The song,” Seraphina said. It was easier to say, here in the dark where she could barely see Glisselda. “I couldn’t have finished it without realizing I loved you.”

“Realizing you…?”

Seraphina raised Glisselda’s hand to her mouth and pressed a kiss to her palm, and Glisselda’s gasp was loud in the tiny room. She stood frozen, and Seraphina raised her head, stricken. “I’m not too late, am I?” Her voice cracked.

Glisselda laughed, and laughed, like church bells ringing in the night. “No, dearest. Never too late.” Her hands caught the sides of Seraphina’s face, and her laughter finally died away. Seraphina couldn’t see who moved first, but their lips met, at first clashing, then finding a better angle. They moved together, and Seraphina made a quiet sound of protest when Glisselda pulled away.

“Only for a moment,” Glisselda murmured, and then she settled onto the arm of the chair, nearly in Seraphina’s lap. Seraphina wrapped an arm around her to steady her, and suddenly, the closeness of her was very real – a warm, solid weight pressed all along her left side.

Seraphina found her neck with her lips, and then her mouth, and Glisselda bent to kissing her with an attention and precision she had never given her harpsichord lessons. There were no more words, until Glisselda’s fingers crept underneath the collar of Seraphina’s houppelande and she stopped to whisper, “Is this…?”

“Yes, of course,” Seraphina whispered, and tilted her head back as Glisselda’s fingers traced the line of her neck, along her shoulder, back and forth in a caress that sent chills up Seraphina’s neck to her scalp. Glisselda kissed her again, but briefly, and she pressed the next kiss just under Seraphina’s ear.

“Does Lucian…? Only, I couldn’t stand it if…”

“He encouraged me,” Seraphina said. “It’s all right.” And it was. Perfectly, wonderfully all right, she realized, as Glisselda kissed her again, all hot breath and the soft, spicy scent of tonight’s perfume.

When next they broke for breath, Glisselda said, “Phina?” There was an odd note in her voice, and Seraphina hummed a question. “You’ve still got your clothes from the ball on.” Her fingers toyed with Seraphina’s collar again, and Seraphina flushed to the roots of her hair.

“I’ve got you rather at a disadvantage, haven’t I?” she asked, and Glisselda’s laugh was all the encouragement she needed. She kissed Glisselda again, undoing the ties to her dressing gown to let it fall loose. With Glisselda’s soft gasp urging her on, she found the hem of the thin gown beneath and ran her fingers up her bare leg: calf to the tendons behind her knee to the soft skin inside her thigh. She paused there, catching her breath in the riot of Glisselda’s hair. “Yes?” she asked.

“Please,” Glisselda said, her own voice a thread. She shifted, and suddenly there was just enough room to press her hand into the hot space between Glisselda’s thighs, to slide her fingers against her until she found an angle that made Glisselda’s breath shake.

What happened next seemed to take either hours or mere seconds: a careful unraveling, Seraphina listening for every change in the tenor of Glisselda’s gasps. She wished she could clasp those sounds in a locket and carry it for all time – or make of them a mind-pearl, never to be forgotten.

At the end of it, Glisselda buried her face in Seraphina’s neck, an arm flung around her, and seemed to be holding on for dear life. When she finally raised her face, she kissed Seraphina with a gentleness that made her ache. “I can’t sleep in your room,” she said at last. “But I can stay a while, and try to do that for you. May I?”

“Yes,” Seraphina said. Shyly, she added, “And any night you like, so long as… Well, we’ll have time to talk about that later, won’t we?”

“Yes, another of our endless talks,” Glisselda said fondly. She straightened and stood, leaving a cold space where she had been. Her hand found Seraphina’s in the dark. “But for now, I think I’ll help you off with those clothes.”


End file.
